Boeing is reportedly looking to sell its ill-fated Starliner spacecraft

There it is.

Fire cell

Beleaguered aerospace giant Boeing is reportedly looking to sell its space business following the disastrous crewed test launch of its much-disturbed Starliner that stranded a NASA astronaut in space.

as The Wall Street Journal In the report, inside sources claim that Boeing is looking to exit the space race altogether in the face of a deep financial crisis — a shocking about-face for a company that works on iconic space vehicles from NASA's space shuttle to the International Space Station. .

The disruptive contractor even approached Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, WSJIts reporting, which is working on its own rockets for NASA.

Despite a decade of development, Boeing has yet to successfully deliver and return astronauts to its Starliner capsule, a damning accusation for a company that has already had several major fires.

In other words, it's no surprise that Boeing is looking to cut its losses — but buyer beware.

Ballast is so hard

Boeing is burning through billions of dollars as its commercial jet business continues to struggle with quality control issues and industrial labor strikes of epic proportions. Earlier this month, Reuters Reports say Boeing will lay off ten percent of its workforce, amounting to a staggering 17,000 employees.

And Starliner, its entry into NASA's Commercial Crew Program, fared no better. The capsule left the International Space Station last month without any passengers on board due to complex technical problems that NASA deemed too dangerous for the crew to return.

According to its latest filing with regulators, the company posted another $250 million loss on its Starliner commercial crew program in its third fiscal quarter, bringing the total loss on the spacecraft's development to a stunning $1.85 billion.

NASA recently announced that an upcoming crew rotation flight to the ISS will use SpaceX's Crew Dragon instead of the Starliner.

Despite seeking a buyer for Starliner, Boeing is still committed to overseeing development of NASA's Space Launch System rocket, which two years from now is poised to deliver the first astronauts to the moon's surface in more than half a century. .

Even so, NASA's inspector general concluded in a scathing August report that Boeing's contributions were badly behind schedule and way behind budget.

In short, Boeing's recently minted CEO Kelly Ortberg now has the seemingly impossible task of picking up the pieces — and scrapping the parts of the business that have put a company in active crisis.

“We're better off doing less and doing it well than doing more and not doing well,” he told analysts during a call this week. “What do we want this company to look like five and ten years from now? And do these things add value to the company or distract us?”

More about Starliner: NASA has abandoned Boeing's doomed Starliner for upcoming missions to the space station